* No, Brazilian scooter racing isn’t a euphemism for something naughty (that I know of). However, it does look like a lot of fun. As Clasp Garage pointed out this week, Sao Paolo closed off its streets for the event every year during the 1960s, and it seemed to attract quite the crowd.

* As Keith Adams at AROnline noted this past week, the Austin 1100 – which he called Issigonis’s greatest production car – turns 50 this year.

* This weekend’s The Henry Ford Old Car Festival will celebrate Henry Ford’s 150th birthyear with a display of the Ford “letter cars” – all the cars that preceded the Model T. To get up to speed on the series, the museum’s blog has put together some information about the models A, B, AC, C, F, K, N, R, and S.

* Finally, Diseno-art has the rundown on the one-off Stranden Scorpione, a Volkswagen-based homebuilt from Norway.

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geomechssays:

September 7, 2013 11:05 am

It’s too bad that ’46 Chev truck can’t be brought back to the mainland and moved away from the salt air and its corrosive effects. That thing is going to be reduced to brown confetti in a few years. But it’s still good for someone to at least try to fix it up where it is. Lots of penetrating oil and paint.

Ford’s Letter cars were always vague for me. I knew what the K and N were but the others were sketchy. I see that the transverse springs weren’t used front and rear until the Model T.

raysays:

September 7, 2013 11:12 pm

Robert Jsays:

September 8, 2013 4:47 pm

Thank you for posting the link to details on the Alcatraz truck. I was out there on July 4th (some may be familiar with what happens on this date on the Island) and I was really curious to know more about it. Cheers.

larry goldmansays:

September 9, 2013 9:01 pm

Really cool story about the Alcatraz truck. Always an adventure for people who have friends with unique jobs. I checked a little further into the Brazilian scooter racing and it mentions them going up to 74km/hr. Maybe I just haven’t seen them yet but all the scooters I see here in the states are wimpy little things that can barely reach 50mph. GREAT story about the Scorpione ! Funniest line being “The taillights are from a Fiat 850, and the indicators flash to the beat of Beethoven’s 5th Symphony. Seriously.”